A tweet could get Tesla chief Elon Musk in trouble with regulators, again

A tweet could get Tesla chief Elon Musk in trouble with regulators, again

Elon Musk back in April came to an agreement with the SEC over a tweet that violated a previous settlement order as a part of which all his tweets about Tesla need to be pre-approved by a lawyer.

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Shweta Ganjoo

New Delhi

August 1, 2019

UPDATED: August 2, 2019 09:07 IST

HIGHLIGHTS

Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla aims to manufacture around 1000 solar roofs per week by end of 2019.

Elon Musk’s tweet came in response to a question about the progress of Tesla’s solar roof tile.

If Elon Musk’s tweet has not been approved by a company lawyer, it could be treated as a violation of the SEC agreement.

Elon Musk often tweets out information that lands him up in trouble. In the past one year we have seen how the Tesla chief has landed himself in hot soup over details about his company and sometimes even comments about other people (remmeber his pedo tweet about the Thai cave rescuer?). Now Musk has once again has tweeted information that could land him in trouble with the US securities regulators.

Musk, while responding to a question on the progress of solar roof tile shared the company's target for the end of 2019. "Spooling up production line rapidly. Hoping to manufacture ~1000 solar roofs/week by end of this year," Musk wrote in a tweet.

While the tweet seems innocent, it can get Musk in trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Council (SEC) over the violation of its April agreement. To recall, the Tesla CEO ran into trouble with the federal authority back in February this year after he tweeted that Tesla would make around 500,000 Model 3S cars this year, which clashed with the company's official statement of manufacturing a total of 360,000 to 400,000 cars in 2019. While Musk did correct himself a couple of hours later, SEC used his initial tweet to prove that he wasn't complying with the earlier settlment wherein Tesla and Musk ended up coughing $40 million as a fine and Musk resiginig from his post of the Tesla chairman.

As a part of the second settlement, which happened in April this year, Musk's tweets about Tesla need to be pre-approved by the company's securities lawyer.

Musk's recent tweet about the production status of solar roof tiles, as the Associated Press noted, doesn't seem to be approved by a Tesla lawyer, which could give the SEC an opportunity to charge Musk with an infarction - again.

However, the report by the news agency states that the SEC could let go off this contempt and wait for another infarction before approaching the court.

Neither Musk, nor Tesla nor the SEC have commented about the matter so far.